Rajon Rondo won’t be ready

Dec. return planned

Credit: John Wilcox

A DIFFERENT TYPE OF GREEN: Danny Ainge lines up a putt on the first hole during the Shamrock Foundation’s “Teeing Up for Kids” tournament yesterday.

Celtics Nation has been braced for patience, but yesterday on the subject of Rajon Rondo, Danny Ainge had to know that his words would be gasp-inducing.

During an interview on 98.5’s “Toucher and Rich” show, Ainge allowed that his best player may not return from ACL surgery until December.

Later, before teeing off in the Shamrock Foundation’s annual charity golf tournament at Wollaston Golf Club, the Celtics president of basketball operations said he would be “shocked” if Rondo was ready for the start of the regular season. In July, Ainge considered that target as realistic.

As to who will plug that slightly important playmaking hole, Ainge came up with three names — Avery Bradley, who ended all debate about his point guard capabilities with last May’s stumbling playoff performance against the New York Knicks; Jordan Crawford, a scorer who throws the occasional nice pass; and Phil Pressey, a 5-foot-10 rookie.

Considering the prospects for this stripped-down roster, there also isn’t pressure to pull Rondo out of his monastic rehabilitation. He will be on hand when the Celtics open training camp at Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I., next week, albeit as an extra assistant on new coach Brad Stevens’ staff, when he’s not, you guessed it, rehabbing.

It’s a significant shift from that emotional moment when Rondo used Adrian Peterson’s lightning-quick NFL return from ACL surgery as his own early goal. The Minnesota Vikings running back, as it turns out, is a near-superhuman exception. Rondo may have discovered he has more in common with Chicago’s Derrick Rose.

“I don’t think we would ever succumb to the pressure of bringing a player back from an ACL too soon,” said Ainge. “We have to do what’s right for him. He’s young. Maybe if he was 37 and it was his last year it would be different, but he’s still so young, and he’s our best player. We can’t afford to make any mistakes.

“I think he’s in a great frame of mind. I’ve been in constant contact with him, and so has Brad. He seems to be in a real good place emotionally and mentally, and now we’re trying to get the physical part there. He’s got a ways to go.”

But don’t ask about an estimated return.

“(I) don’t know,” said Ainge. “We’ve seen examples of why we shouldn’t give dates for return. We’ll take it week by week, but he’s working extremely hard. He wants to play. He’s excited for the new team. There was a time when all of this was happening that he was wondering, where do I fit in and what’s our team? But Rajon is in a very good place right now.”

Stevens, like Ainge, has been in frequent contact with his best player. And he admittedly has to install a Rondo-friendly system without having the actual player on the floor. The offense simply won’t flow as well with Bradley, Crawford and Pressey running the pick-and-roll.

“You try to figure out what works best not only for him but everybody else on your team,” said Stevens. “There’s certainly some things you put in and do what may not be the best fit for others, but will be the best fit for him. At the same time we have a lot of versatile guys, and you can make small tweaks to that without overhauling something while he comes back. That’s something we’ll figure out. You can run a base system at both ends of the court, but you can also run different wrinkles that may fit what’s on the court better.”

Stevens also has much bigger challenges. With or without Rondo, he is about to start a graduate course in alchemy.

“I don’t think that will be easy regardless, because there’s a lot of new faces in a lot of new spots,” said Stevens. “But that’s what we have to do. We have to get on the same page very quickly. That’s what the first 29 days in October are for. Having eight exhibition games seems like quite a bit, but it’s a good thing for our team because we can run out different lineups, try a few different things. I’ll get a better feel for a nuances of the NBA in terms of the timeout rules, advancing the ball and all of the things that never came into play in college. Every day of those 29 will be very important for us.”